Vedant | quso.ai @vedantm_ - Twitter Profile

This is my favorite vacant building in the world- it's the 38th tallest building of any kind in the world, the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang. It will likely stay vacant and continue to be the tallest building in North Korea. It has a crazy story. In 1986, South Korean conglomerate SsangYong built the Westin Stamford- then, the largest hotel in the world. North Korea needed to outdo them. So in 1987, they started building what was meant to be the tallest hotel on Earth: the Ryugyong. A 105-story pyramid with 5 revolving restaurants, casinos, nightclubs, and more than 7,000 rooms… in a country with ~no tourism. They planned to build it in time for Kim Il-sung’s 80th birthday in 1992. The 1000-foot concrete shell was up, but the collapse of the Soviet Union left North Korea broke and entering famine, so they stopped the project. By then, they had spent $750 million on this boondoggle... they spent 2% of their GDP on this building as they entered a famine in the 90's that wiped out an estimated 10% of their population. The empty concrete husk with a rusted-out crane at the top dwarfed everything else in Pyongyang, more than 3 times taller than any structure in the country, a stark monument to Cold War one-upmanship. When they got through the famine they thought to restart building but engineers realized that the structure might be flawed... the elevator shafts were misaligned and they had used poor-quality concrete, so it would be impossible to repair the building. Officials were so embarrassed that they literally airbrushed it out of photos, scrubbed it from maps, and refused to acknowledge its existence They wanted to save face, so as part of Orascom's deal to build a 3G network in North Korea in 2008, they struck a deal to make the Ryugyong look complete for photos... so Orascom covered the exterior in shiny glass... so now it looks complete, even though it's empty inside. More recently, they installed giant LED screens on one side to display state propaganda. Someday I will visit this hotel, but likely not ever as a guest, just to stand beneath it and look up at the world’s tallest empty monument to pride and failure.

pitdesi's tweet photo. This is my favorite vacant building in the world- it's the 38th tallest building of any kind in the world, the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang. It will likely stay vacant and continue to be the tallest building in North Korea.

It has a crazy story.

In 1986, South Korean conglomerate SsangYong built the Westin Stamford- then, the largest hotel in the world.

North Korea needed to outdo them. So in 1987, they started building what was meant to be the tallest hotel on Earth: the Ryugyong. A 105-story pyramid with 5 revolving restaurants, casinos, nightclubs, and more than 7,000 rooms… in a country with ~no tourism.

They planned to build it in time for Kim Il-sung’s 80th birthday in 1992. The 1000-foot concrete shell was up, but the collapse of the Soviet Union left North Korea broke and entering famine, so they stopped the project.

By then, they had spent $750 million on this boondoggle... they spent 2% of their GDP on this building as they entered a famine in the 90's that wiped out an estimated 10% of their population.

The empty concrete husk with a rusted-out crane at the top dwarfed everything else in Pyongyang, more than 3 times taller than any structure in the country, a stark monument to Cold War one-upmanship.

When they got through the famine they thought to restart building but engineers realized that the structure might be flawed... the elevator shafts were misaligned and they had used poor-quality concrete, so it would be impossible to repair the building.

Officials were so embarrassed that they literally airbrushed it out of photos, scrubbed it from maps, and refused to acknowledge its existence

They wanted to save face, so as part of Orascom's deal to build a 3G network in North Korea in 2008, they struck a deal to make the Ryugyong look complete for photos... so Orascom covered the exterior in shiny glass... so now it looks complete, even though it's empty inside.

More recently, they installed giant LED screens on one side to display state propaganda.

Someday I will visit this hotel, but likely not ever as a guest, just to stand beneath it and look up at the world’s tallest empty monument to pride and failure.

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Vedant | quso.ai

@vedantm_

8 months ago

unseen footage from @sama’s last trip to India

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Neil Patel

@neilpatel

8 months ago

Is it even worth posting content on social media? Organic social media doesn’t drive a lot of direct conversions, but it is how a large chunk of people first learn about a brand. Just because someone doesn’t buy right away, it doesn’t mean that the channel shouldn’t get at least partial credit for the conversion.

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Dharmesh Ba

@dharmeshba

8 months ago

If you can’t describe your customer’s day in detail - their frustrations, workarounds, even what’s on their desk - you don’t know them well enough to design for them. Build with their world in mind, not your pitch.

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